


dinner, no drinks

by krakens



Category: BrainDead (TV)
Genre: F/M, canon typical head explosions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-20 01:52:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7386067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krakens/pseuds/krakens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For prompt "Laurel checks up on Gareth to make sure he’s eaten and then they grab dinner. Like the platonic pair of buds they are."</p>
            </blockquote>





	dinner, no drinks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [valkyrierising](https://archiveofourown.org/users/valkyrierising/gifts).



Astroturfing turns out to be much more involved and time-consuming than Gareth was expecting it to be. Usually, he wouldn’t mind that; he was already married to his job and he’s dead-set on impressing after his sudden promotion. But the whole process is leaving a bad taste in his mouth, and the longer it takes to execute the plan, the more time he has to reflect on the ethics of it all.

So, here he is. Fifth night on the job as Chief of Staff, fifth night spent late at the office catering to Red’s ever-changing whims. He half expects the whole manufactured-grassroots-movement thing to go out the window in the morning. He probably wouldn’t even care if it did, at this point. He’s Sisyphus with the rock and the Government is maybe never going to reopen.

It’s pushing midnight when someone comes into the office through the front room. He knows it’s Laurel even before she pokes her head through the door. She has an aggressive footfall.

“Hey,” she says, fingers curled around the door frame.

“Hey,” he echoes, not looking up from his computer screen. He’s got work to focus on, and whatever she’s about to say can only be trouble (they haven’t spoken since the whole debacle at the wake, so the options are pretty slim: she either needs something from him, or she’s here to talk about that). When he doesn’t acknowledge her presence further, she takes a few tentative steps into the room.

“It’s late,” she says. “What’re you still doing here?”

“Ah, nothing,” he says, equal parts because she’s the opposition and because the disparaging voice in his head has started to sound suspiciously like hers lately. Lucky for him, her mere presence has provided him with a convenient diversion. “What are _you_ doing here?”

She seems to falter for a second, and then forges on. “Have you eaten today?” she asks. Just by her tone he can tell she already knows he hasn’t. He leans back in his chair, shaking his head no.

“What,” he quips. “Do you have an intern tailing me?”

“ _May_ be,” she says. She’s reached his desk by this point and taps her fingers against the surface. She’s chewing her lip. He dutifully returns his attention to his laptop screen. But she doesn’t leave. “Do you want to go get food?” she asks. He barely contains his laugh. He hasn’t seen a hair of her in days, and now all of a sudden she’s keeping tabs on his calorie intake and inviting him places in the middle of the night? She must _really_ need something.

“I thought we weren’t talking,” he says. She makes a small noise of affirmation, but also shrugs.

“I got bored of that,” she says.

“You’re going to give me whiplash,” he says. She rolls her eyes. He’s giving her a hard time for the hell of it, because he’s already made his decision. He made it the second she’d asked. It’s the same kneejerk reaction that caused him to invite her to the wake in the first place; he can’t afford to be choosy when it comes to entertaining her attentions. He’s still not one hundred percent sure what their relationship really is, but it seems to be largely born of convenience, so he takes what he can get.

“Well?” she prompts.

He closes his laptop and grabs his coat.

* * *

To his credit, he holds off on the questions until they’re nearly to the late-night Tex Mex place she suggested. She filled the walk with stilted small talk, but has finally lapsed into silence. Her hands are jammed into her trenchcoat pockets and the line of her shoulders is tense and uncomfortable.

“You can ask,” he says, just as they’re approaching the restaurant door. She stops on the sidewalk to gape at him before they go in.

“Ask what?” she says after a beat.

“For whatever favor you don’t want to ask me for. You can just ask.”

“Who says I need a favor?” She sounds indignant, but her posture’s relaxed and her lips tug up into that half-smile she always wears, the one that seems involuntary. She’s so easy to read. He wonders if she knows that.

“So you’re not trying to butter me up by buying me dinner?” he asks.

“No strings attached, I promise,” she says as she pulls the door open for him.

“There’s no such thing as a free taco salad,” he says.

“God, you’re so annoying,” she says, glancing up at the ceiling as they seat themselves at the bar.

“Then what are we doing here?”

“I just,” she begins, turning one of the plastic menus over in her hands. “I don’t know. I’ve had a… fucking weird week.”

He nods in response. She’s been the star of a lot of Capitol Hill gossip these last few days. But it’s still not really an explanation. “And?” he asks.

“And… when you’re not trying to trick me into tanking my brother’s career—” (he lets this slide) “—you’re, I don’t know. An alright distraction.”

“Damned by faint praise,” he says under his breath.

“Shut up,” she says, but he catches her smirk even though she tries to hide it behind her menu.

* * *

“Can I buy you a margarita?” she says, all solicitous, after she orders her own drink. She then continues in a more earnest tone: “They’re half-off.”

“I’m not drinking,” he says, just a firm but polite way to demure. She sits up ramrod straight in her seat, though, letting the bar stool loll towards him slightly as she considers him.

“Why not?” she asks, very serious, and he can’t help but feel a little scrutinized.

“I still have to go back to work,” he says.

“Oh,” she says, seemingly placated by his response. “Yeah, you’re…” She clears her throat. “You’ve been busy.”

“A lot of late nights,” he agrees.

“Probably more bad news for me,” she says, even managing a little bit of self-deprecating levity. Her drink arrives — she got a strawberry margarita, with the cup lined in sugar instead of salt. He’s about to make fun of her for it, but she runs her little finger along the rim and sucks the sugar off absently, and he decides it’d be more prudent to just move on.

“For you it could be either bad or really good,” he says. “Really good if it’s bad for me.”

“Well? Is it bad for you?” she asks.

“I’m not at liberty to say,” he deadpans.

“Uh huh,” she says into her drink. “That’s why you’ve been forgetting to eat?”

“Not forgetting,” he says. “Preempting.”

“Is sleep getting preempted too?” she asks. If he didn’t know better he might think there was a genuine seed of concern for his well-being there. But he does, and she’s just teasing. Maybe wheedling him for information a little, but he can respect that.

“It’ll have to, if my hours get any longer. Or I’ll have to sleep in my office,” he says.

“Don’t do that,” she says with attempted nonchalance, but he can tell she’s anxious. Whatever’s bothering her, that set it off again. She ducks her head down to avoid making eye contact with him, and her hand twists into her messy crop of hair.

“What’s going on with you, Laurel?” he asks. She just shakes her head.

“Nothing,” she says, but she has a bad habit of saying that when it’s absolutely not true.

“Hey, I’m not an idiot,” he says. She looks at him, lips pursed in a way that suggests she might have a witty rejoinder if she weren’t so preoccupied. “I know something’s up.”

“How much do you know?” she hedges, rotating her margarita glass idly.

“I know you saw a guy’s head spontaneously combust,” he says. “And I know that the FBI doesn’t usually investigate strokes.”

Laurel downs the dregs of her margarita. “Those are both true things,” she says, resting her elbows on the bar and pressing her hands to her eyes for a second. He gives her a moment of silence to recoup, but she doesn’t need it. “Just ask,” she says into her hands.

“Did Jonathan’s head _explode_?” Gareth asks, because yeah, he was wondering. Laurel only nods. “Jesus.”

“And then the FBI illegally detained me for three hours because I know too much about heads exploding, and—” She shakes her head like she’s trying to clear her thoughts. “Never mind.”

“It’s alright,” he says, even though it’s just a meaningless platitude at this point. He’s not sure what else there is to say in this situation.

“So that’s why I’ve been acting crazy,” she concedes as she flips through the drinks menu for the umpteenth time. “I’m stressed out all the time, and paranoid—did you know the NSA can use your cell phone as a listening device? Up to fifty feet.”

He answers the question with one of his own. “Are you, you know, seeing anybody?” he asks, and she laughs.

“What, like a therapist?” she asks, and the smile falls off her face when she catches his look. “I’m not _actually_ crazy,” she says, back in her defensive mode.

“I didn’t say you were crazy,” he says, but it just agitates her more.

“That’s what people say to crazy people,” she says, rooting through her purse.

“You saw someone die,” he says as she pulls her wallet out. “You don’t have to be fine.”

“Well, I am fine,” Laurel says, dropping some bills on the bar unceremoniously.

“You’re clearly not,” he says.

“This has been fun,” she says at a clip, grabbing her coat and heading out the door, leaving him alone at the bar.

* * *

It takes him a minute to catch up with her, but he manages to intercept her on the sidewalk outside the restaurant.

“Laurel, wait,” he says.

“What?” she asks, although she doesn’t pause or wait for him, just forges on forward. He keeps up with her as they talk.

“You can’t just walk out on me every time you get overwhelmed,” he says.

“I’m not overwhelmed,” she bites back. “It’s late. I have to get home. And you have to get back to work.” There’s some disdain in the way she says this, and it’s impossible to forget just how incompatible they are on paper. They shouldn’t even be here in the first place. “So it works out,” she says.

“Hey, talk to me for a second,” he says, catching her by the wrist. She tugs her hand away from his, but at least stops retreating and turns to face him.

“Why?” she asks, and she must see his responding question in his expression. “Why talk? Why bother with it?”

“You’re upset,” he says, half an answer to her question and half just a statement of fact.

“I’m not upset and I’m not overwhelmed, alright? I’m just tired, and I’ve had a drink, and if I’m not careful I’m going to… let my guard down.”

“Is that a bad thing?” he asks.

“With you? Yes,” she says. “It’s definitely a bad thing.”

“Why?”

“You _know_ why,” she snaps.

“Remind me,” he says.

“Because you and I are diametrically opposed,” she says. She’s walking again and he follows her, just half a step behind. “If it’s bad for me, it’s good for you, right? And now you’re trying to get me to say that I’m in therapy or traumatized or something, and I don’t need to check the news tomorrow morning and see _Senator Healy salaries crazy sister_ in the headlines.”

“You think that’s what this about?” he asks.

“You’re the one that thought I wanted a favor,” she reminds him.

“I wasn’t trying to get anything out of you,” he says. “It was genuine concern.”

“Oh, careful,” she says, the sarcastic edge in her voice a welcome addition to the conversation. “Genuine anything counts as an actual feeling.”

“Yeah,” is all he has in the way of a rebuttal.

They walk in tense silence for a minute; there’s still a trace of a smile on her face, but mostly she seems to be avoiding his eye. She stares down her nose at her leopard-print heels that no other hill staffer would be caught dead in. They work for her, though, with her laid back, uninterested West Coast demeanor. He’s always thought that Hollywood people were maybe the only more self-important demographic than DC people, but all of that seems to have just rolled off her back. Even if they have plenty to disagree about, she’s a good person in fundamentals, and those are getting hard to come by these days.

“This isn’t going to work,” he announces at length. She glances at him, side-long.

“What’s not?” she asks.

“This thing where you only talk to me under the assumption that I’m prepared to put a knife in your back at any given moment,” he says.

“Don’t act like that’s irrational,” she says. “You’ve done it before.”

“Yeah, but so have you.”

She laughs, more aloof than sheepish. “Fair enough,” she says, ruffling her hair at the nape of her neck.

“So, what are we going to do?”

“Unless you’ve been considering a career change, I’m not sure there’s a workaround,” she says.

“There is,” he says. “You get a time out.”

“I’ll bite,” she says. “What are you talking about?”

“Time out. If you ever want to get food or talk about heads exploding without worrying about politics, just call time out. We can put everything work-related on pause.” He takes a second to consider her reaction, but her expression is just wan and skeptical. “For one hour,” he adds.

“A whole hour?” she quips back.

“Well, there have to be some rules.”

“Otherwise people might think we’re friends,” she says.

“Which is ridiculous,” he says.

“Totally.”

They’ve come to a gentle halt at a place where it would make the most sense for them to say goodnight and part ways, but he can’t help but egg the conversation on a little further.

“So we have a deal?” he asks.

She pulls her hand out of her coat pocket to offer it to him to shake. Her grip is firm but not confrontational — she shakes hands like a politician. Whether that’s something she learned or just something hard-wired in her DNA, he couldn’t say, but he’d bet it’s how she got her documentaries even halfway funded in the first place.

“Getting food and talking about exploding heads was a non-exhaustive list, by the way,” he says. “We can do other things.”

“You can’t change the terms of the deal _after_ we shake hands,” she says.

“I just want to make sure you know all your options,” he says.

“I have to go,” she says, but she’s smiling as she waves goodbye.

(Even on his way back to work and all the murky questions of ethics and justified means that wait there, he can’t help but feel good about things. Laurel was right, for the most part, about Washington and cynicism. It’s a necessary armor in a place where ideology might as well be warfare. But she was wrong about him — his problem has always been that he cares too much.)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm taking fic prompts on tumblr @ alltheladiesyouhate!


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